Author: Steamy Chick
Published: December 11, 2019
For over 20 years, Kit Maloney has been an activist, academic, and entrepreneur committed to channeling her passion for gender equity into a celebration of women’s embodied health and healing in the Portland, Maine area. Kit’s been featured widely in the media, including Glamour, Self, and Bustle. Marie Claire named Kit an “Amazing Woman” for her work honoring the importance of women’s sexual pleasure, including solo-sex and female orgasms. We interviewed Kit to learn more.
What is your profession?
I am the founder & CEO of Kitara, a brand creating beautifully designed, high quality, great value products for safe and easy in-home vaginal steaming. During my certification course with Steamy Chick, I heard the instructor say, “Every home with a woman in it should have a vaginal steam sauna.” I was such a YES to that vision that I started Kitara to do my part in making it happen!
Where did you go to school or get your professional training?
I hold various degrees and certifications, including a Masters in Gender & Social Policy from the London School of Economics, Dartmouth’s Tuck Business Bridge Program and a RYT 200 hr yoga teacher training. But so far, I can honestly say that nothing has quite changed the course of my career and life as wonderfully and dramatically as my vaginal steam certification.
How long have you been practicing?
As soon as I passed my Steamy Chick certification exam in Spring 2019, I started offering vaginal steam consultations.
How did you learn about vaginal steaming?
I originally learned about vaginal steaming at a workshop about female ejaculation. I heard a number of women talking about their “steaming practice” and how we should all steam in circle. There I was, certainly no newbie to talking about taboo, exploring alternative healing modalities, and championing yoni bodied wisdom. And yet… I myself was a bit eye rolley about a steaming circle.
(Patriarchy’s grasp is strong!)
Thankfully, however, those ladies and their enthusiasm for steaming stuck with me. At the time I was living in Colorado and a little while after that workshop, I started working with a local practitioner offering womb massage and steaming. I LOVED IT. I went from steam skeptic to steam super fan in just one session.
When my practitioner moved to Hawaii, I enrolled for the Vaginal Steam Certification course through Steamy Chick thinking I would use the knowledge simply to support my own menstrual and womb health. Little did I know at the time that it would lead to a whole new venture for me!
Do you use vaginal steaming yourself?
Yes!
What has your personal experience with steaming been?
I love how Steamy Chick says, “Just because something is common, doesn’t mean that it is normal.” Hearing from her that brown blood before and after bleed is common but not normal, blew my mind. I can’t tell you how often I reported this to my doctors and for over 25 years they always said it was normal!
Thankfully I now understand that brown blood is a sign of an incomplete womb cleanse and was the cause of my lower back pain and cramps. Since adopting a steam practice I am amazed and delighted to see how my steam practice supports my natural uterine cleanse, has cleaned out the brown blood, and alleviated my lower back pain and cramps.
Why did you decide to offer this service to women?
So many of us women are disconnected from our bodies in general, and from our yonis and cycles in particular. Vaginal steaming is a practice that I’ve seen work on so many levels – from the physical to the more energetic and spiritual. It’s got it all, so it’s an honor to share it!
Where do you offer your services?
All my products and services are located online at kitaralove.com. In addition to live video consultations, I sell our #bywomenforwomen and #madeinmaine vaginal steam saunas. Upon purchase of a sauna, the customer receives an intake form. This allows me to customize a complementary herbal blend, steam set-up, and steam schedule that comes to them with their sauna.
Why did you start making and selling vaginal steam saunas?
I think it’s really important to work with a trained practitioner at the start of a vaginal steaming practice and to check-in with your practitioner throughout the year. I am also a champion of adopting an in-home practice too. Having a sauna makes in-home steaming so much easier and that means more women will actually steam and that means more women will actually heal.
I set out to make saunas that are elevated in design, well built, safe, distributed widely, and sold at a great value price. Today we celebrate that the Kitara sauna is the first vaginal steam sauna ever available on Amazon and is also sold on Etsy and Kitaralove.com for just $187 including shipping.
I also saw an opportunity for this business to support women in many different ways. Our saunas are built by women for women and our herbs are supplied by women owned organic farms. We share 1% of all revenue with Sabia C Wade’s incredible non-profit For the Village, a reproductive justice organization that provides free full spectrum doula services to all families who have been marginalized and are of low socioeconomic status in San Diego County.
You’ve started a vaginal steaming product line, any funny stories?
At the same time I was designing the Kitara sauna, my husband, pup, and I had just moved from a newbuild townhouse in Denver, CO to an 1848 farmhouse in rural Maine.
It took quite a few prototypes for me to finalize a design that functioned great and looked great too. Admittedly, the very first prototype was comically huge and the many contractors we had traipsing through the house were none too shy to comment that it looked like a giant indoor toilet!
What’s really fun is now that we have finalized the design, I have a sauna out in the living room right next to our couch. When not in use, I put a jar of flowers on it. Recently a contractor knelt down next to it to and perched his clipboard on it to make some notes. He then got up to leave and simply said, “cool end table!”
He had no idea that he’d just given me the compliment I’d been working towards for months!
For more information:
Kit Murray Maloney
Portland, Maine
www.kitaralove.com
IG: @bykitara